11:45 pm - Go Ahead and Laugh, Yeah, I'm a Funny GuySo it began after we gorged ourselves on Jess's delicious batch of fondue. Part of the dessert (besides the chocolate fondue) was cupcakes. As Jess was describing her constantly evolving cupcakes, someone suggested glow-in-the-dark cupcakes.

"GFP!" cried Perlich. I explained to Dan what GFP was. Robin, a med student, described how one could get mammals to express certain proteins in their milk; for instance, they had gotten some goats to produce milk that contained spider silk protein. For whatever reason. Comments were made about freaky spider-goats and spider-cows and other scientific anomalies. (Robin's point was that you could get GFP milk and use it to make the frosting: thus, glow-in-the-dark cupcakes.)

Soon after, in an unrelated conversation, I brought up Twilight, which Elina was not quite familiar with, and the table agreed she was better off that way. "As far as I can tell, Twilight fandom makes Harry Potter fandom look sane," I explained. Jess remarked that the seventh-grade girl demographic was really scary, but I said that it's a great demographic to target if you wanted to get really rich. I needed to think of something to appeal to them.

Dan brought up the Thunderbird play we're kinda-sorta-but-not-really working on, Back to the Suture, which is about a time-traveling arm. We could make the main character a teenage girl with a time-traveling arm. When I said that it wasn't really the right demographic to target for a Thunderbird play, he said that we were taking it past that now, into a series of novels. At least eight.

We could even throw in the spider-goats, he said. Now that it was a book, we could do anything we wanted.

"And it would provide an interesting CGI project for the movie," added Janet.

I said, "Or they could just tape two goats together."

And the entire table cracked up—Dan Sylvia Debbie Elina Jess Perlich Robin Janet me—like it was just the tipping point of the absurd, the kind of infectious laughter that even the jokester himself can't escape, can't breathe.

In the middle of the laughter, Janet: "That was funny."

And I felt I had to record this moment for posterity, because I love saying something so funny that its funniness has to be verbally acknowledged.Current Mood:happyCurrent Music: Neutral Milk Hotel - Naomi